


Between Iron and Silver

by Jakowic



Series: Suppertime ‘verse [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alana Bloom/Margot Verger side, Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, F/M, M/M, Multi, The Great Red Dragon - Freeform, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter side, canon disabled character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:48:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25625425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jakowic/pseuds/Jakowic
Summary: There’s blood on his knuckles and in the grooves of his teeth. He’s locked somewhere between that Dragon and the man.That’s how he feels he exists: caught in the transition, somewhere there’s a word that’s hidden inside the meta- and -morphosis. He is perpetually Becoming, never quite the larvae and never the moth that flutters free from the cocoon. He is only a cocoon in his dreams.Reba looks at him, through him, between him. Her eyes never focus, not that he cares at all. “Oh, honey. Have you hurt yourself?”-AU
Relationships: Francis Dolarhyde/Hannibal Lecter, Francis Dolarhyde/Reba McClane
Series: Suppertime ‘verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1860988
Kudos: 4





	Between Iron and Silver

The needle punctures skin with indelicacy, because there isn’t any sort of particular artistry between the needle and the subject the needle punctures; the only artist is the hand that wields the needle.

This thought doesn’t occur to Francis while he is getting the tattoo, but rather when he’s flat out on the padded floor of boxing ring, dripping spittle and blood into the crack where the two mats meet. He thinks, rather sardonically, about indelicacy and the art of being delicate.

”Get up,” his coach says, mean bark and scruffy growl. “This is pathetic. You call this a fight? Get up. I said get up!”

It’s a dragon, because he’s cliché, and he got the start of it when he was seventeen and a moron.

You hang around the docks, white trash and wifebeater, knock-off chains, and either the hardcore folk beat the shit out of you or they’re in a good enough mood to find you entertaining. Sometimes they adopt you. Sometimes you get a tattoo, or sell dope, or end up in a fighting ring.

Sometimes you do all three.

So he started the head of the dragon when he was seventeen. The artist was an immigrant from Japan who needed some practice, and Francis had been volunteered by the nearest cutter.

Eventually he finished it. Learned to take the pain. Then they put him in a ring.

Jack thought it’d be funny if they called him The Red Dragon. Francis swears some day he’ll be great.

He gets up and takes another punch - because goddamn, he really won't ever fucking win, will he? It hurts, of course it does, neither of them are padded or protected, bare knuckles to _train,_ goddammit, because that's the kind of place this is, that's the kind of people Francis surrounds himself with. The guy's wearing a ring, and it smarts across the scar already on Francis' lip, splitting the bottom and making him bleed.

He stumbles, inelegantly, can hear the disappointed snarl from his coach, the fury in it too, and then he swings around, takes the momentum of his fall and drives it right back into the other man's face.

He drops like a chunk of concrete.

For a second there's no sound but the uneven wheeze of Francis' desperate inhales (the blood is thickening under his nose and making it hard) and the steady _drip ... drip ... drip_ of sweat onto the floor as Francis stares at his opponent's prone body. He can't think a single thought, just blood rushing in his ears and the empty feeling that winning wasn't really winning at all.

"Good lad!" Jack's saying, grabbing Francis by the shoulders and shaking him, laughter on the peaks of his teeth.

Francis just thinks about the needle, and the skin, and the dragon on his back.

꧁♞꧂

There's a 


End file.
